In order to operate fleets of transporting vehicles, such as trucks, ships etc., efficiently and profitably, it is highly desirable for the dispatching office to continuously know, or accurately estimate, the location of each vehicle, its destination, future destinations, cargo etc. In the case of Great Lakes shipping this information is needed so that the dispatching office can properly assign cargoes and docking and unloading assignments to minimize passages with empty cargo holds and waiting time for docks. This is particularly troublesome in the event of schedule changes due to breakdowns, cancelled cargoes, etc., wherein the dispatcher must change ship assignments to continue the previously planned assignments with a minimum of lost time and cargo. Often the ship dispatcher will trade cargoes with other shipping companies to fill voids in the ship's schedules.
In order to have sufficient information for proper scheduling, the ships periodically contact the dispatching office by radio as to their position and destination. The reporting periods can vary from daily, to several times a day, depending upon the size of the fleet and the reporting procedures set up by the various shipping companies. The messages are generally picked by a remote station and transmitted to a central receiving office, where the messages are in turn available to the shipping offices via the teletype network. The information sent usually includes the date, the ship's location, departure time if in port, the present destination and future destinations, and any additional special reports or messages. In addition various shipping companies are cooperating in providing a weather report. The weather information generally includes wind speed and direction, cloud cover, visibility, air and water temperatures, period and height of waves, and ice conditions. This information is compiled to provide an accurate and up-to-date weather report for Great Lakes Shipping. It should be understood that although the background of this invention is being specifically directed towards Great Lakes Shipping, the invention will apply to ocean shipping, trucking operations and other situations wherein the destinations, cargoes, loading time etc., of mobile vehicles are controlled from distant stations.
At the present time, the communication link between the ship and the dispatcher's office is provided by a communication company that has a series of receiver-transmitter repeater stations about the Great Lakes, which receive the messages from the ship and send them on to the dispatcher's office via the central office. The expense involved is based upon, among the items, the time involved in conducting the radio communications between the ship and the communication company. Hence, the length of the radio message and the number of messages enter into the expense involved in the communications cost of operation of the dispatcher's office.
There are times a ship may be at a location wherein the navigational requirements are such that it is undesirable to make reports, or to answer communications from the dispatcher's office. It would be highly advantageous to have an automatic reporting arrangement or system in which the data to be communicated is prepared at some convenient time and automatically transmitted when needed or requested, thereby alleviating the crew from this responsibility at times when their services are needed elsewhere.
The communication company generally has message centers wherein the ship's messages are received, recorded and subsequently transmitted to the dispatcher's office. The message can also be inserted into a computer at the communication company along with sufficient data to automatically calculate, upon request, the ship's location at any later time. It would be advantageous if an automatic reporting system was provided that transmitted messages in a digital form that could automatically be processed by the computer thereby eliminating the need for the operator conversion of messages into digital form.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a new and improved report register for mobile vehicles, such as ships and the like, for transmitting information in digital form.
It is also an object of this invention to provide a new and improved report register that can be used in conjunction with a radio included on a mobile vehicle for automatically outpulsing data in digital form.
It is also an object of this information to provide a new and improved report register for mobile vehicles for storing data in digital form and for automatically outpulsing the same in response to an interrogation signal.
It is still a further object of this invention to provide a new and improved report register that provides means for storing navigational data, weather data etc., in digital form and for outpulsing the same in response to an interrogation signal.